Paid advertising through Google AdWords or other pay-per-click services can be a great way to bring well-targeted traffic to your site, but it’s important to remember the other half of search results. After all, organic (unpaid) search results won’t chip away at your margins.

So to get a little “free” advertising, why not spend a little time optimizing your product pages for search engines? Chances are, your ecommerce software isn’t doing it for you. Here are six things you can do to get started:

1 - Research keywords for your products

Each time you add a product to your store, you should take a few extra minutes to optimize the description and page title for search. But don’t choose your keywords at random! It’s important to find out what words that people are actually using when product-hunting online.

Tools like Wordtracker, Yahoo!’s keyword suggestions and Google’s AdWords keyword tool will show you what terms are being searched for. You might find some frequently-searched terms that have little competition. These niche keywords can be a real sweet spot!

2 - Identify products in page headings

Many ecommerce solutions don’t properly code page headings in HTML. Page headings are supposed to be represented by the HTML tag <h1>. However, many ecommerce systems will improperly code it as a paragraph or table. While they might look the same either way, only the <h1> is properly understood by search engines. If you’re not using these tags, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to set the keywords for your page.

3 - Put product names in titles, too

The same rule applies to your page titles, too. Some ecommerce solutions will simply use the title of your site on every page, but this isn’t the best solution. It’s better to include the product, category or page name along with your site’s name - since search engines will use this to determine what the page is about.

For example, let’s say we’re selling a shower radio. The titles <title>Acme Electronics: Shower Radio</title> or <title>Shower Radio - Acme Electronics</title> are both good choices. A note: while both versions will be measured equally by search engines, the second one, which lists the product name first, may generate more clicks as the last portion may get cut off on a results page.

Paul Bradish shows us how important titles can be. He brought his blog’s search ranking up significantly in Google’s results with just minor changes to his <title> tag.

4 - Label your links

Search engines will also use the links pointing to a page to determine what a page is about. This is especially true for Google. The general philosophy behind this is that any web page will naturally try to promote itself. As a result, it’s more likely that other pages and sites will give an honest assessment of a page.

This rule is first applied to links from other sites. When you acquire an inbound link from a directory, product review or any other website, it’s best if the clickable text of that link includes keywords relevant to the page that’s being linked to.

But this rule also applies to your internal navigation. So, in the same way that you include a product’s name in the heading and title of its own page, you want to include it within the clickable text of any links pointing to it. A link to our example page that says “shower radio” in the link text is much more valuable than one that says “click here” or “learn more”.

5 - Use search-friendly URLs

Most ecommerce systems use variables in the URL or address to define product pages. (You can see this when URLs ends with an ugly string of numbers and letters: page.php?category=42&productid=3827). Search engines are usually capable of listing these pages, and not much consideration is given to the URL itself. But, as mentioned in the previous step, search engines give weight to links from other pages, and often people will use the URL of your page to link to you.

Because of this, it’s better to use a URL that includes product names or words. www.example.com/category/product-name/ is a good format to use.

Some eCommerce solutions require manual changes in order to do this. Others can be modified automatically with plug-ins — I found some for Miva, osCommerce and X-Cart. Of course, some solutions, like Elastic Path, include this feature out-of-the-box.

If you already have pages that rank well, you might want to skip this step. To search engines, changing URLs is like erasing and re-creating a new page. Your rankings may not be preserved.

6 - Don’t miss the point!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way to bring in targeted visitors, but your site still needs to convert. Some site owners cover their pages with links and repeated keywords in an attempt to boost search engine rankings. Not only will these techniques fail, they’ll make your site less usable for your visitors.

Your main goal of your site should be to educate visitors about your products and persuade them to become customers. SEO efforts need to work in harmony with your site. Never sacrifice quality content for it.

Keep search in mind

SEO can be complicated, but as long as you keep these rules in mind when you’re setting up your product pages, you should see some improvements in your search traffic. But remember, these are just a few of the many techniques that you can use to improve your site’s rankings in search engines. If you’re interested in some further reading, Chris Beasley of WebsitePublisher.net recently published an excellent SEO guide that’s invaluable to any site owner.

Gmail has posted some guidelines for bulk senders to increase deliverability to Gmail recipients.

If you use Gmail, you likely already know its spam filtering is one of the best in the biz… However, lately (in my inbox at least) more and more legitimate mail is ending up in the spam folders. This is because Gmail’s spam filtering is very largely based on user’s hitting the “This is spam” or “This is not spam” button.

A lot of the guidelines are pretty standard among all major ISPs. However, a few stuck out to me, that you may want to be aware of:

• All bulk messages you send must be formatted according to RFC 2822 SMTP standards and, if using HTML, w3.org standards.
• Messages should indicate that they are bulk mail, using the ‘Precedence: bulk’ header field.
• Attempts to hide the true sender of the message or the true landing page for any web links in the message may result in non-delivery.

Recommendations for unsubscribes:

• A prominent link in the body of an email leading users to a page confirming his or her unsubscription (no input from the user, other than confirmation, should be required).
• Explicitly indicate the email address subscribed to your list.
• Support a URL method of unsubscribing from your mailing list (this is beneficial if your mailing list manager can’t tell who is unsubscribing based on the ‘Reply-to:’ address).

Check out the full list of guidelines…

Thanks to Tamara at Be Relevant for pointing this out!

I’ve been a little light on posting this week, but just in case you’re up for some weekend reading, here are some highlights from the world of email:

• Why Email Marketing is Like a Resort Vacation
• Free Lipstick Helps Gather 10 Million Subscribers (Thanks Tamara)
• The Seven Deadly Words in Subject Lines (+ 100 more you shouldn’t use)
  Whitepaper, register to download
  
• Plan Now for a Winning Holiday Email Program
  Webinar by Return Path
• The Retail Email Holiday Season has Begun!

Shopping for apparel online is a continually growing trend. It really doesn’t get much more convenient. The selection and offers are endless. Shipping and returns have become less daunting. So just what is the challenge to this #1 online category?

I think it comes down to consumers’ relationships with the brand. For example, there are certain brands I’m very comfortable buying online. It comes down to feeling confident that the brands I like won’t mess with quality or sizing. I need to know that the picture I’m seeing online is a real representation of what I’m about to buy. And I need to know that if I bought a size medium last time, I can buy a medium again…and it will fit.

On the flip side, this is exactly the reason I would have a hard time buying apparel from an online retailer that I’ve never purchased from. Sure I could be motivated to browse, but for my first purchase, I would really want to head to the store and try it on, touch it, feel it…all this good stuff. Once comfortable with the brand and confident of the style and sizing, you better believe I can be wooed to the online experience.

So what’s a online retailer to do? Well the first thing to do is recognize the reality of cross-channel shopping. Don’t just recognize it. Embrace it. Offer first time visitors coupons that they can use online or at one of your actual stores. A little web personalization can help here. Hook them whatever way you can. Impress them with quality, service and brand. Over time, I think the initial challenge of not seeing and touching will diminish. Over time, there will be a comfort level not to mention the whole convenience and offering that’s waiting on the web.

For an interesting report on this very topic, read this article from eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000423

Attention all e-retailers!! The 2007 holiday season is fast upon us and we’ve got consumer data to help you align your marketing efforts wisely…

According to a survey conducted by the American Marketing Association before last year’s holiday season, 14% of respondents (online consumers) cited email including e-newsletters as their best source for information about new products. This puts email in a top 3 position for its ability to drive online sales.

Slightly above email was the Internet at 15%. And on top, by far, were TV ads with 37% of consumers citing TV as their best source for information.

Oh ya, what about traditional media you ask? Well let’s just say it pulls single digits in terms of its ability to boost retail sales online…

So what does this mean to the average e-retailer? Well if you’ve got gobs of budget, go for TV ads, Internet and email!!!

But for the majority of e-retailers, there are budget caps so you really have to think smart which brings us back to the Internet and email…

Here at Sitebrand, one of my favourite past times is doing email ROI calculations. These calculations are very enlightening since they reveal how much money gets left on the table everytime one of our customers or prospects skips sending an email. It’s the same old story over and over again:

“We try to send weekly, but we get busy and we’re lucky if we get our emails out monthly.” Our response — Cha-ching - you just left $x,000 on the table. 

OR 

“We’ve got a database but we don’t have anyone who can code the emails so we’ve never sent anything.” Our response —- Cha-ching - you just left $x,000 on the table.

If you want me to calculate your email ROI, just ask!

Then there’s the whole Internet thing. I just don’t understand why all e-retailers haven’t embraced web personalization? What part of the need for creating unique, relevant web site experiences that lead to increased conversion is so hard to understand? Again I think there are some misconceptions around web personalization. Some people think it’s really expensive. Others think it’s hard to integrate, etc. But again, this isn’t the case and if anyone wants the scoop, just ask!

To read the full study, go to eMarketer at:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005285&src=article1_newsltr